A Long Time Coming
by Rjalker
Summary: Socrata Thrace has always known that the day would come when she could no longer hide from the things she'd done.


**A Long Time Coming **

**Created on 4/21/2014, 10:29PM**

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Socrata slammed her hand onto the surface of the kitchen counter with a sharp _slap_. "_Kara_!" She roared, throwing the wooden ladle she'd been holding into the sink so that it bounced off the side with a clatter, then lowering her voice to grumble in irritation to herself, "_Told_ her to get in here five minutes ago." She spun sharply to face the eagle that sat perched on one of the chairs that surrounded the small dining table, "_Didn't _I call her in five minutes ago?" She wasn't looking for confirmation, just an excuse to shout some more. Socrata Thrace-formerly _Farren_, she always thought to herself bitterly, whenever she had to sign a paper that demanded her full name, before she'd met that good-for nothing piano-playing idiot fool-loved to shout. It was one of her favorite pastimes. Because if she were shouting at her daughter, or the neighbors, or the military, or the world in general, then she wouldn't have any time to shout at herself.

And Socrata Farren had plenty of reason to shout at herself.

Her daemon ruffled his wings in response, and clacked his beak loudly, just as irritated as she, but left the shouting up to her. Of both of them, he was usually the less vocal. But, she thought, again,_ bitterly_, it hadn't _always_ been that way.

Snarling quietly to herself and shoving the memories that wanted to surface away, she stormed over toward thewindow above the sink, and peered out with angry, hawk-like eyes, searching the concrete expanse of the front 'yard' for her daughter, knowing that she would find her crouched down over the concrete, paint brush in hand, her daemon probably scrabbling around her as some sort of lizard or rat, using his claws and tail to weave intricate lines of color across the sidewalk. Why she'd ever gotten them the watercolours they'd begged and pleaded for, she would never know. All the darn crap was going to do was frak up her front lawn.

The sun was bright in her eyes, and she squinted, wondering to herself for a moment if they'd climbed over the wall into the back portion of the yard. A few wallcreepers had managed to eek out a living back there, worming their way up through the cracks in the concrete, and had spread their way across the sidewalk and up the walls.

Kara had made a game of pretending that the vines were glass, and Socrata had once watched her through the dining room window as she and her daemon danced their way across the sidewalk, sometimes running, something walking, sometimes skipping or jumping or sprinting, but never letting her feet touch anything but the bare concrete.

Her daemon would change shape with each lap they made. A wolf, a lynx, a griffon, a macawnivore, a bearowl, a horse, a dragon, a secretary bird—something she'd only ever seen in holovids about the creation of the Cylons by Graystone Industries, and the death of the company owner's daughter, which had sparked the idea, so she had no idea how _Kara_ knew about them, unless she'd learned about them at school—even an acromantula once, which had sent the air from her lungs like a kick in the stomach, and Kormoran shrieking and flapping into the air in shock. Any shape that had legs, he took on, and raced with her across the plant-scattered concrete by her side, and when they finally reached the far wall, she would throw one leg out, and kick off as she spun around, and race back the way she'd come. Her daemons would leap forward, shift in mid-air, and push himself off just as she had done, before racing after her.

Their game sometimes went on for hours, her daughter somehow managing to find seemingly endless reserves of energy.

But the walls were filthy with dirt and smoggy air, and the ground littered with impossible dirt that seemed to have appeared from nowhere. Every time she came in from the backyard, she and her daemon were trailing so much grime that it almost looked like she'd taken part in the annual elephant dive where idiots paid to slosh their way across a field of mud six feet tall to raise money for temple-run charities for the poor and disabled.

Socrata growled, and turned away from the window to land on the floor, which was as white as it was possible to get. She'd spent the last hour scrubbing at it to get rid of the dirt and stains the little brat constantly dragged in with her filthy feet and hands.

On the stove top, the casserole she'd made was slowly cooling to room temperature. It was moussaka, topped with mashed potatoes instead of eggplant, because Kara and her daemon didn't like how it tasted. She'd made it in the purple glass pan, which for some reason she couldn't figure out, had always been her daughter's favorite.

She huffed in exasperation as Kormoran flapped into the air and flew to the dining room to check if she was out back. Apparently, food tasted better when it had been made in the "pretty pan", instead of the other normal, clear ones. She'd even gotten a loaf of her favorite pineapple bread, and the small pomegranates that her daemon had always liked.

She couldn't afford much in the way of gifts—and Kara's recent behavior at school hardly made her _deserving_ of them—but she'd saved up as many credits as she could, and, after calling in a few favors with old friends, had managed to get her hands on the cheapest holoband she could find.

It was cracked on one side, and so old that it had been old when _she_ was a kid, but cracks could be taped, or glued, and as long as it was clean, she didn't care how it looked, as long as it worked. It wasn't pretty, and some kid had painted little pink and black swirls all over it, but her daughter had been begging and begging for years and years, and she'd finally given in.

But just because it was her birthday didn't give her an excuse to ignore her when she called her in for dinner. She felt her daemon's confusion tickle in the back of her mind like a half-cut off question, and frowned.

Kara wasn't in the backyard, and—when Socrata finally gave up with looking out the window and stalked out of the kitchen to the front door—she wasn't out front either.

Shielding her eyes with one hand to give them time to adjust to the sudden, blazing brightness, the heat that rolled over her skin was so thick she could have sworn it had a physical weight to it. Kormoran landed lightly on her shoulder, his talons digging into the fabric of her shirt to steady himself.

His eyes were keener than hers, and he'd barely been perched on her shoulder for a moment before he launched himself forward again, curiosity and confusion buzzing through his mind like wildfire as he skimmed the air toward one of Kara's paintings that, to Socrata's weak and currently stinging eyes, was nothing more than a blurry patch of red streaks on the concrete near the far wall.

"What is it?" She called gruffly, stepping out onto the first of the steps that lead down into the yard, her side twinging with old pain when the step was farther down than she'd been expecting. Snarling at herself for forgetting that part of the stone had broken off during the last snowstorm, her daemon's sudden anxiety spurring her on, still shielding her eyes from the merciless sun, she marched down across the concrete patio, her bare feet slapping against the burning ground with every step, the heat and wind weighing her down like an almost literal weight.

It was humid out, and the sensation sent her skin crawling and her mind reaching back for the air conditioning of the house. A single bead of sweat rolled down her arm, and she set her teeth in her jaw. Kormoran was perched on the wall above the painting, every single one of his feathers standing on end, and his usually strong frame visibly trembling in the heat-waves that radiated off the ground. She knew how he felt. She could almost _smell_ the intense earth and greenery of rainforest air.

Anxiety of her own already crawling around inside her guts like a snake, she stood in the shadow the high wall provided, the cooling shadows allowing some of the memories that wanted to flood to the surface to ease back under, and let her gaze drop to the concrete by her feet.

Even with the humid air all around her, and the sun in her eyes, she laughed. She'd been right, earlier. Because, surrounding the painting her daughter had made—some sort of abstract thing, with red and blue and yellow all swirled together in a strange, almost target-like design that was littered with black squiggles between each color to separate them, and one very clear image of a Viper in the centre—were little paw-prints in black and brown paint, radiating out to continue the pattern she'd made. Yellow in what she recognized as wolverine prints, red in rabbit, blue in deer hooves, and a thin layer of white in what was very obviously a snake trail. Little mouse prints in black had woven themselves in between all the others, creating a clear distinction between where one color began, and another started.

Kara had been in love with the pattern for as long as Socrata could remember, doodling it everywhere she got the chance. Paper, cardboard boxes, _the walls_, even her schoolwork, which was only _one_ of the reasons her teachers weren't happy with her.

They sent her home with behavior reports saying that she spoke out of turn, insulted other students and her teachers, and was always getting into fights. Her daemon apparently refused to take on any school-appropriate shapes, choosing instead to become alligators several times her size, dragons that spit fire when he was mad, and once, he'd turned into a basilisk when the teacher asked them to go out in the hall.

Needless to say, they'd been sent home immediately, and suspended from school. For two weeks. The headmaster had tried to make it longer, until Socrata had stormed into the school, dragging her daughter by the hand behind her, and showed her the error of her ways.

Socrata had made sure they would never repeat such behavior again. Her daughter's back still had scars from where she'd whipped her with her belt.

Staring down at the newest incarnation of the drawing, she huffed in satisfaction. Her daughter had never dared to act out again after that. Some things you could only teach children through pain, and for Kara, it seemed that pain was the only way she ever learned anything.

Kormoran hopped down from the wall and landed on her shoulder with a precision born of years of practice, still trembling from the humidity in the air and the rainforest smell they could both feel lurking at the edge of their senses, waiting to pounce in shades of brutally intense green and dark shadows.

She lifted her head to peer again around the small concrete enclosure, her eyes scanning along the two walls that separated the front of their lawn from the back, branching out from the square walls that contained the area they owned, and connecting with the sides of the house. Each one consisted of two thin concrete walls, with an entire foot of space between them. Giant sunflowers whose seeds Kara had gotten from her school's gardening class two years ago had been planted in the soil that her father had helped to dump between between them—a year before he'd left them, because Socrata was fed up with his refusal to get a _real_ job to support, and had forced him to choose between his piano and them—now grew to towering heights, their petals ranging from golden orange to blue, to red, to green, to purple... and Socrata felt a moment of understanding stir her heart.

Because the purple flowers were the exact same shade as the glass pan that Kara said was her favorite. Her father helping her to plant those flowers had been one of the last things he'd done with her before he left.

Her mouth twisting into a scowl at the memory, at the way Kormoran hadn't been able to control himself with the secret sorrow they both felt as the man they'd loved enough to marry walked out the door for the last time, they grey parrot on his shoulder not even looking back once.

Kara had chased them out the door, her daemon a huge griffon with the legs of a cheetah and the wings and of a vulture, crying out in a high, keening voice that seemed like it could shatter glass, "_Come back!_"

She'd never heard her voice so distraught. Not even in the fight that had broken out between them afterward, her eight year old daughter beating her fists against her legs and arms and back, screaming at her at the top of her lungs, tears streaming down her face, her daemon still in his griffon's form, his beak open and pointed at the ceiling in a shrieking howl of despair so loud that she thought her ears would bleed.

She'd grabbed her daughter's hand in an iron grasp, and twisted until she was forced to the floor, and Kormoran had launched himself at her daemon. His talons had raked through the thick feathers and fur, drawing blood, his wings buffeting the younger daemon's head with powerful blow after blow, until the two of them were huddled together, crying desperately in both pain and sorrow.

There were tears streaming down all their faces by the time it was over. Wiping them roughly away with her sleeve, disgusted with her own weakness, she dragged Kara back to her feet by her collar, and shook her roughly. She knew she was upset. She had every frakkin' right to be. But there were lines you didn't cross. And no daughter of hers would _ever_ think it was okay to attack her.

"_Don't you ever, dare raise your hand to me again_!" She'd hissed, releasing her daughter's now bruised wrist to grip her jaw until her daemon ceased his dog's teeth-bared snarling and gave a yelp of pain, Kormoran's claws digging deeply into his back, "_Do you__understand me girl_?"

And Kara had sobbed, and nodded, and choked out a whispered yes, and, suddenly overwhelmed with the reality that _Dreilide had left her_, _he was gone, and he was never coming back_, she'd pulled her daughter to her chest—the daughter that she was now going to have to raise by herself, the daughter she knew was more special than anything the world had ever seen, and it was all up to her, because there was no one left to help—and together, they'd mourned the loss of the piano-player and his beautiful parrot daemon.

Staring now, at the flowers her daughter had brought to life, a small ache stabbed at her heart.

Then she remembered the casserole that had taken her two and a half hours to make, still cooling on the top of her kitchen counter.

"Kara?" She called, raising her voice so that it echoed hollowly off the concrete and back at her, "It's time for dinner, get your ass inside or you're not getting _anything_!"

She knew full well that her choice of words implied that her daughter wouldn't be receiving any birthday presents, and she knew full well, too, that Kara would understand that as well, and would know, full well, what she'd be giving up if she continued to ignore her mother's demands to come inside.

Silence echoed back at her, and the painted hand and paw-prints on the wall seemed to laugh with childlike glee.

Socrata Thrace stood there for several more seconds, her daemon even flapping up to the top of the wall-turned-flowerbed to check if the two were hiding behind or in it, before, with an exasperated sigh of irritation, she held up one hand for her daemon to perch on, and went back inside the house, determined to enjoy the food she'd made, even if her daughter's stubborn mischievousness would keep _her_ from getting any of it. She didn't care if Kara came in a minute after her. If she didn't come out of her silly hiding right this instant, she wasn't getting any food. Socrata had no patience for people who wasted her time, and her daughter knew it, too.

But no mud-covered, paint splashed child suddenly leapt down from the wall, or the roof (she'd taken to climbing up and onto them recently, trying to see how close she could get to the nest of ravens that roosted there), or was found sitting, grinning cheekily, at the dining room table when she went back inside, blessing the air-conditioned chill and dim-lighted shadows with every prayer she knew.

So, with a grim smile of dark amusement, Socrata Thrace concluded that her daughter was feeling rebellious on the first of her birthday's they'd celebrated since her father had left them, and pulled out a chair for herself and her daemon, where they sat down to enjoy one of the finest meals they'd had in a long while.

There was, of course, plenty of alcohol to be consumed, and by the time they had eaten their fill, both Socrata and her daemon were pleasantly buzzing with cloudy, muddled enjoyment, and, filled and content, they stumbled and floundered their way back to their bedroom, and fell asleep promptly.

Completely hung-over with a pounding headache and regrets they both knew they would act on again no matter the consequences, it was only late into the afternoon of the day afterward that they noticed the plate of food they'd left out for Kara and her daemon—in a sudden, drunken fit of fiery affection—still sat, untouched where they'd left it, on the kitchen counter.

On the dining room table, the holoband they'd wrapped with colorful paper in Kara's favorite shade of purple still sat where they'd left it, the card they'd bought propped open on-top of it, declaring for everyone to see that the gift was for Kara and her daemon.

Upon seeing that, both Socrata and Kormoran—who had been wobbling along behind her in a shuffling walk, not trusting his wings to fly—stopped dead in their tracks, and simply stared.

A pit of dread spread out from her stomach and crawled up into her lungs like fire.

The air left Kormoran's chest in a half-strangled scream.

Because, between the pages of the open card filled with cliché wishes for happiness, a knife—a familiar knife, a knife she'd lost so long ago—had been speared through the body of a dead spider the size of her hand, pushed down and into the box containing her daughter's gift so hard that only the handle protruded from the dead arachnid's body.

She didn't need to read the words that had been written with its blood on the tabletop.

Had she anything in her hands at that moment, it would have slipped from her fingers to shatter on the floor. But her hands were empty, and all she could do was bring them to her mouth, to keep the words that wanted to be voiced at bay, so that she herself, could keep from shattering.

One foot stumbled back, and then another, before the actions registered with her brain. Then she launched herself forward, desperate and angry and _terrified_.

Her daemon clutched at her shoulder so tightly that his talons had pierced her skin, and blood that neither of them noticed swept freely down the front of her shirt, staining the fabric a deep, terrible crimson.

On the table, carved into the wood with the very knife that had been used to spear the dead spider—the same knife that she'd lost years, _years_ ago, the knife she'd never thought she'd see again, the knife she'd grown to hate more than anything in the world—were three words.

_I owe you._

She knew that handwriting. She knew the hand that had gripped the knife, knew the eyes that had followed its path, making sure that every line of every letter was careful and smooth.

Three words, a dead spider, and a knife.

And that was all that it took for Socrata Thrace's mind to dissolve into horror and despair.

Because she knew, only too well, who had taken her daughter away from her. Her mind flashed to the symbol that had been painted on the concrete ground, the smudges of red that had all she'd been able to see from the stairs that led inside.

A thousand spiders swarmed across her heart and lungs, a thousand poison-green leaves surrounded her on all sides. The heavy hydraulic footsteps of the enemy so close behind was the only thing she could hear over the beating of her heart. Kormoran was pressed to her chest, her arms wrapped tightly enough to hurt around his back and folded wings, his claws gripping her arms until it was painful.

And they ran, terrified, knowing that they were leaving someone behind. Knowing that, if the Cylons found him, if they found him, they'd take his daemon away, and they'd try to take Kormoran, too, if they caught _her_, and all she could do was run, and hope to draw their attention, and hope that they would follow her instead of looking for her wounded comrade.

But the terror in her heart clouded her senses, and she ran long after the enemy's footsteps had faded into nothing, and by the time she realized _what she'd done_, it was already too late.

Everyone knew what had happened to Finnin Daniels. But no one felt the horror quite as keenly as Socrata Thrace.

It was, after all, entirely her fault.

And now she was paying the price.

The woman fell to her knees, her hands clutching and ripping at her hair, her voice caught in her throat in a scream that refused to be voiced. Beside her, her daemon screamed, and screamed, and screamed, and she finally understood the helpless horror and desperation her daughter had felt the night Dreilide left them.

"_Please, Gods,_" She choked out, clutching at her head, her eyes, with her hands, "_Please, not my Kara_!"

But the Gods had never answered her prayers before, and looking down from Olympus, they would have laughed at her audacity. Socrata Farren? Asking a favor of them? After what she'd done? Ha! The woman deserved any sorrow she met.

And so it was, on the day after her 9th birthday, that Kara Thrace went missing.

It would take exactly thirty-three days for her to be rescued, but, when the time finally came, just like Finnin Daniels from so long ago, it would already be far too late.

There were some things that never changed, and once you went through what the Cylons had done to Finnin, there was no turning back.

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**Finished on 4/25/14, 2:52AM**


End file.
